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On February 4, the Arkansas House Committee on State Agencies & Governmental Affairs passed HB 1339, the bill to establish the National Popular Vote Plan. The vote was 12-6. All Democrats on the Committee, and one Republican, voted in favor.

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The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votesâ€”that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded.

The bill is currently endorsed by 1,246 state legislators â€” 460 sponsors (in 48 states) and an additional 786 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.

The National Popular Vote bill has been endorsed by the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Miami Herald, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sacramento Bee, The Tennessean, Fayetteville Observer, Anderson Herald Bulletin, Wichita Falls Times, The Columbian, and other newspapers. The bill has been endorsed by Common Cause, Fair Vote, and numerous other organizations.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a stateâ€™s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in Arkansas (80%), California (70%), Colorado (68%), Connecticut (73%), Delaware (75%), Kentucky (80%), Maine (71%), Massachusetts (73%), Michigan (73%), Mississippi (77%), Missouri (70%), New Hampshire (69%), Nebraska (74%), Nevada (72%), New Mexico (76%), New York (79%), North Carolina (74%), Ohio (70%), Pennsylvania (78%), Rhode Island (74%), Vermont (75%), Virginia (74%), Washington (77%), and Wisconsin (71%).

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 22 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes â€” 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

We need to keep single member districts and plurality elections. We need to keep the Electoral College system and promote the Maine/Nebraska system of allocation. We need to repeal all limits on contributions, expenditures and reporting rules. We need to simplify and drastically reduce ballot access rules, or eliminate Government printed ballots altogether. This will give us the best electoral system.

To reduce government power, we need serious term limits on office holders: 3 terms for US House, 1 term for US Senate, Pres and VP 2 terms, Governors 2 terms, other state reps and senators 6 years (8 in some states) and, most importantly, most judges should be limited to 2 years and out.

We must abolish eminent domain and judicial contempt of court powers. We have to expand the power of both judges and juries to overturn bad laws – FIJA.

Direct election or NPV would cause candidates to focus all their efforts on a few heavily populated metropolitan areas and ignore the rest of the nation.

We should quit wasting our time and energy on crazy, stupid ideas that will actually reduce our liberty, such as direct election of Pres and VP, National Popular Vote, PR, IRV and other schemes that will make things more confusing and give more power to the State and the S o c i a l i s t s.

We need to keep the Electoral College to help preserve the relative power of the states. The Federal Government is already too strong. We need to Smash the Monster down to size. Give more power to the monster will move us in the opposite direction.

As has been suggested in another thread, we might benefit from having Senators elected by their State Legislatures again as well.

Democracy is not a goal. It is not even a good system.

Our goal should be LIBERTY.

Government is evil. It is always evil. It can never be anything but an evil monster and we have to keep it contained.

Limited democracy is a method of containing the monster. It has no virtues or benefits on its own.

To advocate for unlimited democracy, or any further movement in that direction demonstrates that the advocate is completely unaware of the realities of political systems or the advocate is one of the proponents of F a s c i s t – S o c i a l i s m as their preferred outcome for the people of America.

Loverâ€™s of Liberty will have to emigrate to a new land if the NPV or any form of direct election of Pres and VP should be adopted.